I thought it would be easy to find out but I haven’t found a free site that provides an index of politician’s interests in the US the way “They Work for You”:http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ does here in the UK. “Open Secrets”:http://www.opensecrets.org/ seems to be down and “Fundrace 2004”:http://www.fundrace.org/ only deals with the presidential race. Anyone fancy spending some money with “Political Money Line”:http://www.tray.com/ to find out where Hastert does get his funding? Anyone know a good site that would let you find out for free?

P.S. This is sparked off by the “row”:http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/09/01/soros_responds_to_drug_money_insinuation.html over Hastert’s seeming claim that George Soros could be receiving funds from ‘drug groups’.

Copernic has just made a free “desktop search tool for Windows”:http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/index.html available that searches your files, email and the web. It has already been “reviewed favourably”:http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3401711. From the looks of it this is the best desktop search tool yet for many – especially at the price! If I ever get my email store back (see “this heartbreaking tale”:http://blog.org/archives/cat_personal.html#001218) I will be sticking with “X1”:http://www.x1.com because unlike Copernic’s product it indexes Eudora email (which I prefer).